


For The Soul To Speak

by LittleScavenger



Category: Pygmalion - Shaw, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:39:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6898927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleScavenger/pseuds/LittleScavenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She planned to do nicely for herself tonight, what with all the bustle on the other side of the street. She new the right words to get a man to buy a lady a pretty flower that matched her eyes, her lips, her elbows, her anything. Easy pickings for easy pickings, she reasoned, darting just beyond the tail end of a carriage cab when she connected with a solid mass of something that sent her tumbling backward and flat onto her behind, her basket slipping from her arm and rolling unceremoniously onto the street. (Pygmalion AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For The Soul To Speak

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever published fanfic regarding any pairings or any anything. I hope it is enjoyed. Feedback and constructive criticism are both greatly appreciated! :)

When the rain began, it was gentle. It was a mist on the summer breeze at sunrise, though as the day trod on, the air became thick with that familiar choking humidity. The clouds had grown darker by noontime, threatening to burst. They must have found their intentions of drenching the cobblestones of Niima Court Road unsuitable for the particular hour and instead settled for splitting and spilling their contents over the twinkling jewels and tailored dress coats of jabbering theatre attendees. They squawked in horror beneath the torrid assault of the sky, desperate for shelter as they huddled beneath the theatre’s generously over-extending balcony, preening.

  
Rey didn’t much mind the rain. It was a welcomed drink for her skin, smeared with topsoil and littered with freckles. Her simple and often prickling wool dress had not seen the washtubs nor boards in quite a long while and, greedy, sought to make itself heavier with the dampness it collected from the sky. With a woven basket beneath her arm, she weaved through the stalls settled on their cobblestone plots, sheltered by threadbare tarps and guarded by mustachioed merchants. She knew each man well, though chose not to disturb their work. She would rather they let her alone, anyway. She planned to do nicely for herself tonight, what with all the bustle on the other side of the street. She new the right words to get a man to buy a lady a pretty flower that matched her eyes, her lips, her elbows, her anything. Easy pickings for easy pickings, she reasoned, darting just beyond the tail end of a carriage cab when she connected with a solid mass of something that sent her tumbling backward and flat onto her behind, her basket slipping from her arm and rolling unceremoniously onto the street.

  
“Oi! Ain’t you got the mind t’look where yer goin’, sir? These were ‘alf a days wages, they were, and now you’ve gone and left them wilted. All trod in the mud. Two bunches of violets trod in the mud!”

  
The man that had stooped to aid Rey in gathering each pitiful piece of her bouquet winced at every word she spoke.

  
“Terribly sorry, miss,” he mumbled, hastily tossing each bruised flower into the woven basket. Rey snatched the rest of the violets up hastily, desperate to keep them from becoming any more waterlogged or worse: trampled.

  
“Just ‘alf a day’s wages,” Rey grumbled, rising to her feet. The uncomfortable dampness she felt at her behind coupled by the creak of her knees only seemed to make her brows knit further together in frustration.

  
“Finn! Go and get us a cab!”

  
The shrill words made Rey’s ears twitch as the young man before her offered her a weak, apologetic smile before nodding in the direction of the voice and escaping it. Instead of fleeing the voice as he had, Rey drew closer to it, dashing through the heavy rain as the droplets disappeared into her mousy hair knotted tightly at the nape of her neck. As she approached the sour-faced woman, Rey did not waver, though many others would have weaved passed her thinly set painted lips that seemed to be already poised with their answer. The fur collar of the woman’s bristled as if it sensed Rey’s approach.

  
“Ooh, so he’s your son, is he? Well, if you’d done your duty by ‘im as a mother, surely you wouldn’t let ‘im spoil a poor gal’s flowers and run off without payin’?”

  
Rey’s calloused, muddied fingers had the delicate stem of a drooping violet pinched between them. The woman hadn’t glanced at the sad-looking thing before waving a hand in Rey’s direction, her cold gloved fingers brushing against the velvety purple petals. One fluttered to the ground and rested there a moment before it was crushed underfoot.

  
“Go about your business, girl,” the woman’s words were surrounded by the sneer of her lips as she moved toward the curb in hopes of accomplishing what her son could not.

  
“And you wouldn’t go off without payin’, either,” Rey sighed, resigning herself to rest against the stone column beside her.

  
“Two bunches of violets trod in the mud,” Rey knew she shouldn’t have raised her voice at the gentleman, but she could hardly forgive him for ruining her product of the evening. What could she do with nothing to sell and no money to gain? The lodgings she had were teetering on the edge of irreparable and the loaf of bread she had been tearing at for near of two weeks had begun to sprout those fuzzy, speckled green spots that sucked at the moisture within. She hated those fuzzy green spots.

  
“Oh, damn it all. Worse than before,” Rey turned at the words, finding a rather tall gentleman - no, more than a gentleman - standing beside her beneath the protection of the theatre’s balcony. The oddly natural cruel curl of his lips was the second thing Rey noticed. The first was flames of red coiling, lapping at the rim of his hat. Rey had never seen anything redder in all her days.

  
“If it’s worse, it’s a sign it’s nearly over,” A sweet smile had formed on Rey’s lips once the man had peered down at her, copper brow quirked in mild interest.

  
“Cheer up, Captain. Buy a flower off a poor girl?”

  
“I’m sorry,” the man replied quickly, “I haven’t any change,”

  
“S’alright, I can change ‘alf a credit! Take these for druggats, then,”

  
“I told you, I haven’t- wait,” the man stiffened, his hand reaching deep into his pocket to produce three golden pieces that shimmered in his palm. Rey wondered at the weight they would hold in her hand.

  
“There you are, then, if they’re of any means to you,” the red-haired man placed the pieces in her hand and swiftly turned, leaving Rey to pocket them quickly with a muttered word of gratitude. She would eat tonight, then. Perhaps if she sold two more, she could have coal, and manage to patch that opening in the roof, and -

  
“You better give him a flower for it,” a voice warned gruffly. Rey knew it. It was Teedo, a merchant who was fond of constant vigilance, though only when it interested him.

  
“There’s a bloke behind that pillar takin’ down every blessed word you’re sayin’,” he muttered, moving on his way. There was an alarm ringing at the base of Rey’s skull that warned her to leave, find home, find food, end her night early, but she could hardly stand to allow some stranger to write down each word from her mouth without her having a say in it. She wasn’t doing anything wrong, anyhow. She peered behind the pillar.

  
“I ain’t done nothin’ wrong by speakin’ to the gentleman,” Rey countered, as if announcing her innocence to the congregation outside the theatre. “I’ve a right to sell flowers if I keep off the street! I’m a respectable girl, so help me! I only asked him to buy a flower off me!” Rey could not pinpoint the moment she had grown so loud, nor when she had left the pillar and moved to the group of women growing increasingly appalled surrounding her. There was a commotion, now, and quite a large one at that. She understood that she had to defend herself and do so quickly rather than be taken to sit overnight in the cells. There were several women attempting to calm the girl down, other men holding jingling coins in their palms as if to pay for her to shut her mouth and walk away. Rey found the shock of red hair and soon the face of the gentleman she had spoken to as he entered the crowd and subsequently shouted for him.

  
“Sir! Please, sir, don’t let ‘im charge me,” Rey cried, moving backwards through the crowd that easily parted for her, her back connecting with the dampness of the pillar once more. Her eyes were wide, as if those of a doe’s staring down the barrel of a gun. The line between honest fear and an honest show for the crowd was beginning to blur. If she raised enough of an alarm, she knew, it would either aid her or crush her. By making herself seem as pitiful as possible, she may have a chance. “He’ll have me tossed out onto the street for speaking to gentleman!”

  
“There, there!”

  
The voice cut through the blather of the crowd, deep and powerful, as a man emerged from behind the pillar at last. As wide, mossy eyes found the man at last, it was his height that Rey found most intimidating. He towered over her as well as the many witnesses of the scene. With coal-black curls that hung just beside his clean jaw and hands clutching a small notebook before him, Rey wondered for a moment if he was death. Instead of writing her words, he was writing their names, and that filled her with a new breed of terror as he approached.

  
“Who is hurting you, you silly girl? What do you take me for?”

  
Rey noticed how the man’s lips curled around each word, each syllable, and realized that she had never seen anything but a slack-jawed man speak before with a mouth open wide and loud.

  
“I never said a word to -“

  
“Shut up, shut up,” the stranger sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with impossibly long fingers. “Do I look like a policeman?”

  
“Well, what d’you take down me words for!? How do I know y’took me down right? You just show me what you wrote about me!”

  
Rey’s words received a sidelong glance from the stranger who, decidedly amused, peeled back the paged of the notebook and stuck it beneath Rey’s nose.

  
What she saw there was nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense with odd little symbols here and there. They reminded Rey of shapes though they doodled and wound themselves up and down every page without rhyme or reason at all. She glanced from the book to the man and back again.

  
“S’not proper writing. I can’t read it,”

  
“Oh? Well, I can. “Aye sahye Cap’n, buy ya a flow-er off a pour gal,” the stranger’s fingers lead Rey’s eyes as each word she said was read back to her, but she found that this time it was far more difficult to understand. Rey’s eyes found the man’s, scrutinizing as they were, and followed him as he sidled away.

  
“Oh, it’s ‘cause I called him Cap’n!” Rey cried, moving quickly through the crowd and grasping the horrified young man’s arm, her pleading and sniffling obviously setting him on edge. “I didn’t mean no ‘arm by it sir! Don’t let him charge me, I can’t be charged!”

  
“There’ll be no charges, no charges at all! You won’t be charged! Now listen here, sir,” the man called loud enough over Rey’s words for the stranger to stop and turn on the heel of his boot. “Really sir, if you are a detective you needn’t be protecting me against molestation from young women until I ask you. Anyone could tell that the girl meant no harm,” the man’s words were clear as they silenced the chatter of the crowd and the thrumming of Rey’s heart within her chest. She wasn’t going to be charged. She meant no harm.

  
“He’s no detective,” a gruff voice spoke from the crowd, “look at his boots!”

  
The stranger smirked, jotting something that Rey couldn’t quite understand on the pages of his notebook. “How are your people down at Yavin?”

  
“How do you know my people come from Yavin?”

  
The stranger’s smirk became all the more knowing. “Never mind, they do,” His narrowed gaze turned to focus on Rey once again.

  
“And how do you come up so far east? You were born in Goazon Grove,”

  
Rey stood a moment. She did not speak, not for a long while. She had never seen this man before in her life. How could he know where she was from? Had he known more of her than she would care for? She swallowed a bout of panic before finding herself speaking to the younger gentleman beside her.

  
“How d’you know I was born in Goazon Grove? I couldn’t live there any longer, they had me paying ten credits a month! That’s too much for a poor girl like me, Captain, I can’t -“

  
“Oh, live where you like, but stop that noise!” The stranger’s voice carried easily over Rey’s as he moved to create some distance between the pair of them, his little finger pressing deep into his ear.

  
“And how do you know this all this, sir? Do you do it for a living outside a music hall? How do you do it?” the redheaded man queried, forcing the stranger to turn on him and smile, albeit tersely.

  
“Simple phonetic speech. That’s my profession, also my hobby. I can place a man within six miles. I can place him within two miles, sometimes within two streets,”

  
“Ought to be ashamed of himself, unmanly coward!” Rey cried, wiping the phantom sting of tears from her eyes. “Let him mind his own business and leave a poor girl alo-“

  
“Woman!”

  
Rey was silenced by the sudden and deep cut of her words and turned, glaring, at the stranger.

  
“I demand you cease this abominable wailing at once or seek out some friendlier sky!”

  
Rey clutched at the buttons leading down the front of her dress. “I’ve a right t’be here same as you!”

  
The stranger inhaled sharply through his nose, eyes narrowing as he moved to lean over Rey as she moved further against the pillar, casting her in deep shadow.

  
“A woman who utters such disgusting and depressing noises has no right to be anywhere at all. She has no right to live. Your native language is that of Shakespeare and of Hawthorne and of Keats. Do not sit around honking like some dreadful goose. It isn’t your wretched clothes or dirty face that keep you where you are, my dear, but the wailing of your words.”

  
Rey curled her arms around herself then, suddenly becoming aware of the pills of wool collecting on her dress and the soil that she had smeared on her cheeks while choosing her nightly product. It was more than this, though, that kept her where she was. That’s what the stranger said.

  
“You see this dreadful creature here, sir?” The stranger was speaking again, this time to the young Captain, and gesturing to Rey as if she were no longer there. “Why, in six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball. I could even get her a job in a flower shop, which requires better English.”

  
Rey turned at this, peering over her shoulder at the stranger.

  
“What’s that you say?”

  
The dark man grinned. “Yes, you crumpled piece of newspaper. I could turn you into the Queen of Naboo with the proper materials. Meaning myself,” the young man folded his arms over his chest, looking incredibly smug with himself.

  
Rey’s eyes found those of the silent redhead, her head tilted in curiosity. “You don’t believe that, do you, Captain?”

  
The young man replied with a near-fond smile. “Anything is possible, my dear. I am a student of Alderaanian sanskrit myself.”

  
“Are you?” the stranger at Rey’s side straightened suddenly. “Do you know General Hux, the author of Alderaan’s Unspoken Sanskrit?”

  
“Why, sir,” the man grinned, “I am General Hux. Who are you?”

  
“I am Kylo Ren, author of Professor Ren’s Force Alphabet!”

  
The young general’s grin grew wider. “I was going to Starkiller to meet you!”

  
“I was going to Starkiller to meet you!”

  
The two men found their hands in a tight and friendly grip, chuckling softly at the circumstances. Rey watched silently from her perch on the pillar. These were learned men, she understood. And rich ones.

  
“Where are you staying? Never mind, you’ll be staying with me. We’ll have a nice jaw over some supper. Alderanian language has always fascinated me,” Kylo Ren spoke, hand still clasped around the General’s as they stepped into the cobblestone street. Rey followed.

  
“Buy a flower off a poor girl, sir? You’ll be my first wages,”

  
“Liar,” Kylo Ren sneered, “You said you could change half a credit,” and with those words, Rey felt her blood begin to boil once again as the two men left her behind in the street.

  
“You ought to be stuffed with screws, you ought! Here!” Rey shouted, tossing her basket of dead violets into the air and sending it toward the men with a hard kick. “Take the whole bloody basket for druggats!”

  
Kylo Ren glanced toward the upturned basket with violets scattered about it as if it offended him personally. He stepped forward, silent a moment, before moving in a sweeping bow toward Rey. She stepped back.

  
“If only to remind you,” Professor Ren reached into his pocket and emptied the several gold and silver coins within it onto the top of Rey’s basket before turning and joining General Hux once again.

  
Rey rushed forward, hardly glancing after the men before falling to her knees in front of the basket. This was more money than she had seen in all her days. More money than she had ever made selling flowers on the street. She began rapidly stuffing her wages into her own pockets, though every coin seemed tainted by the words of the man who gave them to her. He wanted her dead for the way she spoke. She wanted him dead for the way he spoke to her.


End file.
